No, BeOS is not dead as many will speed to the forums and proclaim. YellowTAB‘s Zeta is the true inheritor of BeOS 5’s fortune, as it is based directly on Dano/EXP’s codeline (which was supposed to be BeOS 6 but was never finished as Be sold its IP to Palm). At last, I got my hands on Zeta Beta-5a, and here is what I found and think of it so far. You might need to have some experience with BeOS in order to follow this article, but screenshots are included to make it easier for everyone.
Installation
YellowTAB rewrote BeOS’ installation procedure and the result is called the “ZetaInstaller”. It is similar to the BeOS installation application except for the fact that you have a few more options to take care of and manually tick, for example, selecting which kinds of applications you want installed (emulators, office, development, games etc.). There is also a new button named “language,” which loads a window with rather weird options for an installation procedure (I still don’t understand what this “Strings” tab does). Check the first screenshot regarding this new window. (Update: I got word that this will be replaced by a simple drop-down menu for language selection – better that way).
It takes about 15 minutes to install Zeta and it is not difficult at all. However, it is more involved than Be’s original Installer and in my opinion, it shouldn’t have been. The fact that the user has the ability to select applications one by one to be installed might seem as “power to the user” to some, but for me it is completely unnecessary and it brings a dreadful Linux-like feeling to the installation (the whole OS is less than a gig when installed anyway, so I see no reason for such selections).
With this new installation, YellowTAB fixed something that didn’t need fixing and left the real install limitation of BeOS still unfixed: during installation, the user can only “initialize” partitions as BFS in order to install BeOS, but can’t create, edit/resize partitions. This is a huge limitation for most new users and plagued BeOS back in the day, and it will continue to do so, unless the user already has a free partition waiting for Zeta. YellowTAB should have concentrated on fixing this limitation of BeOS’ Drive Setup instead of adding useless features like “Stings”, application selection and “GCC version choice” that only bloat the installation and do not follow the paradigm that Be had and everyone loved: “keep it simple”.
Another thing with the new installer is that it doesn’t (yet) support point to point installation as the older installer supported. This feature allows a user, while booted into an already installed BeOS, to set as “Source” the CD or any BeOS hdd partition and as “Destination” any partition and BeOS would automatically get installed to the new partition without needing to boot from the CD. This feature was as life/time saver for most users!
Overall, the installation IS good and simple, simpler than most Linuxes and Windows that is. But not better than the original (except the language setting which is indeed useful).
First Impressions
The Zeta boot screen is a bit different than BeOS’; the same really, but with Zeta’s logo. However, what is immediately disappointing is that Zeta takes 23 whole seconds to load on this machine (a machine which has had BeOS 5 on it forever and loads it between 9 and 10 seconds). I did a little research and found a few of the reasons for this slowdown. First and foremost, Zeta comes with some 400 fonts. Personally, I find this ridiculous. BeOS/Zeta never even had a DTP application written for, let alone a pro graphics package that would justify the decision to come with so many fonts. I see no reason to bloat the default installation with 400 fonts when they won’t be used by most users, and especially the kind of users that will buy this product, who want BeOS for speed-speed-speed. The other reason is the startup sound, which is 1.3 MB (original Be startup sound is about 140 KB). I am sure there are other reasons for the slowdown but these were the only two that I was able to isolate (Update: YellowTAB is looking into the problem, might be Tracker’s new SVG capabilities that create the problem). Other than that, the first boot in this beta version of Zeta greets you with two dead replicants, but that’s easily fixable (as long you understand what a replicant is, which is a concept that new users have trouble with).
From startup on, the OS feels a lot like the legendary leaked version of Dano/EXP with most of the BeOS 5 apps able to work (about 8% of the BeBits‘ ~2900 BeOS apps won’t run on Dano/Zeta because they are too old and the API has changed a bit). YellowTAB has changed the Deskbar folders from ‘Applications’ and ‘Preferences’ to Demo, Bookmarks, Software and Preferences. Software now has a number of submenus with application launchers, like games, office etc. I like the order found on Software’s hierarchy, but now that YTAB decided to put subfolders there, maybe the “Demo” folder should go under Software too, in order to avoid clutter in the root window. As for the “Bookmarks” submenu, it would only have been useful if these were the same bookmark-set as the ones NetPositive (BeOS’ browser) creates instead of a completely different set of bookmarks files. I see no point having these 5-6 bookmarks there linking to YTAB’s sites and friends, while it doesn’t use your own Net+ bookmarks at all. It defeats the purpose of having a bookmarks menu, at least in the way KDE and Windows use this feature.
On the good side of things, you will find that YTAB has worked on their themes and they got it… more right than in their past attempts. They include a number of window manager themes, but most are just variations of the same theme, so overall there are about 8-9 different window manager themes to choose from. I got fond of the “Smoke Decor” to be honest. It has its problems but it seems to be the most carefully designed of all.
Another great thing that I love about the Dano/EXP codebase — now found at Zeta — is the “smooth window dragging”, which is explained here better (only visible on CRT monitors, LCDs won’t feel the difference). MacOSX is the only other OS that has this feature (and in fact it does it better than the BeOS, as the BeOS’ way is a bit of a hack since the Be engineers didn’t have the full specs of the graphics cards they were supporting in 2D mode back when they were implementing this feature. Under BeOS there is some tearing when moving windows, on OSX it is “clean”). Other new features include flicker-free updates of windows, more color sensitive UI, non-rectangular window support and more.
YellowTAB includes a number of applications with the OS. This version I tried, beta 5a, featured CD tools (e.g. Helios), a few demos, development applications (e.g. CodeLiege IDE), the Bochs emulator, three games, some internet applications (BeAIM, BeShare, Mozilla, NetPenguin, Beam, Phoenix), some third party multimedia apps in addition to the BeOS ones (e.g. SoundPlay, SampleStudio, DVDRip, VideoLAN), BePDF and more. There is still space on the CD to be filled up with apps, as the ISO was only ~500 MBs.
YellowTAB has developed a few applications from scratch, like the FFMpeg front-end which allows you to encode videos, the Fax-It application which allows you to send faxes and another one called BeEAR, which I have no idea what it does as the app would only load itself in German language, even though my localization was set to English (my guess is that it is an address book though). There is also a To-Do application, called ToDoIt, also coded by YellowTAB and, as the other YellowTAB applications, will only be available for Zeta.
Zeta uses a modified OpenTracker and Deskbar version which supports Internationalization and a few other goodies like cut/copy/paste directly when selecting some files/folders (a feature missing from the original Tracker). This Tracker also supports SVG, but I found no way to enable its settings globally (you can only control it on per-window basis, as far as I know, I could not for example set all windows to 128×128 or 16×16). Deskbar now supports “Team Expander” which will expand the running applications’ windows to be able to select them directly instead of having to navigate on a submenu to reach them. Nice add-on, I really like it, but there are bugs still. The “Move To”, “Copy To” and “Create Link To” context menus have been enriched with more options. So far, I had many instances where NetPositive and other apps won’t respond to my mouse’s double click to minimize, while the minimize button (found only on some themes) does work.
YellowTAB comes by default with a number of useful Tracker add-ons, including a brand new one named “Fax these files”, which loads a new FAX-It application created by YTAB+friends especially for Zeta. Overall, some good new additions and options and some bloatware/duplication ones, like the addition of DockBert, a MacOSX-like Dock application which, when it comes down to it, it does exactly what Deskbar does. It serves no purpose having two different taskbars on the same OS, and BeOS was never the OS of many choices (like OSX and Windows too), it was the OS with the best defaults. Zeta seems to fail in this regard, adding a lot of new but similar things instead of perfecting the solution at hand that is proven to work.
YellowTAB comes with… three GCC compilers. GCC 2.94, 2.95 and 3.2. YellowTAB claims that including the old BeOS compiler is necessary for easier adoption of the platform by the existing BeOS developers (applications compiled with GCC 3.2 won’t run on anything but Zeta you see, so the older compilers are needed). In my opinion, this is a bad situation. YellowTAB should bring the OS forward. When Be moved to R5, their forward compatibility issues wouldn’t allow creation of executables that could run on R4.5 either, but all older applications would run on R5. They made a choice to not allow legacy into the OS and without having an impact to the users, as all older binaries were still working. In my opinion, YellowTAB should take the same course and move the OS to GCC 3.3 and optimize it for all sorts of new cool stuff and forget the past. Allowing binary compatibility with R5 binaries is enough, developers will migrate with time.
Zeta comes with BONE, which was the new networking stack for Dano. It was modeled after BSD’s networking stack (it is not a port though, it is brand new code), and it offers much-superior performance to the old user-space based net_server which used to crash very often. Be left the BONE development in pretty much 90% of its completion and debugging but I don’t have any information about whether YellowTAB has completed the job or left it as-is.
Dano/EXP was also coming with some 3D support (Voodoo 3/4/5, ATi Radeon up to Radeon 8500, some Matrox G400/G450 3D support, Intel i810/i815/i820 and an SiS model I can’t remember now). Jason Sams, one of the brightest Be engineers that ever joined the Be team, created the GL stack and drivers with little help from others, and our benchmarks back in the day at BeNews showed that this was a very fast stack by year 2000 standards. However, no one really can get into Jason’s mind as there was no real documentation on how he put the whole thing together. Other Be engineers who looked at Jason’s accomplishment were left scratching their heads on how it worked (Jason had also created a brand new programming scripting language which looked like assembly to help him with the development). Jason works for nVidia these days (he left PalmSource recently). YellowTAB is left with no documentation about this particular GL stack, so there was no 3D support in the Zeta I tried. In fact, running a few *software* GL applications would result in crashes after a while (even the simple GL Teapot app). Please note that this PC has been running BeOS 4/5/betas for many years now, so it is definitely not my graphics card at fault here. YellowTAB is telling me that we will have to “wait and see” about 3D support; they do have something at work but it won’t be ready for quite a while.
Speaking of drivers, YellowTAB has brought to the table a number of new drivers, like better 2D support for ATi and nVidia, some more networking card support and Audigy, AC97 support. Zeta also features the new printing API and tools Be designed that look extremely nice, professional and simple! Check screenshot.
YellowTAB also works on the LocaleKit which will allow Zeta to support localization for most languages, something that BeOS lacked severely. They have contributed work on BeAIM, Jabber, wireless LAN drivers, video capture card support, support for latest CPUs (I think HyperThreading support is already there, Be added it a few years ago, when Xeons HT were not even available, with the help of Intel). YellowTAB also did some work on AbiWord, on a new word processing application (no details yet) and they now support all three kinds of USB (UHCI, OHCI, IHCI – BeOS 5 only supported Intel’s USB well, but VIA’s not very well or not at all depending on the chipset). There is also a new add-on to be added to Zeta, which will bring ODBC support to the OS! YTAB was telling me that this module will be available for testing soon.
Zeta uses the updated Media Kit, which doesn’t have broken support for codecs as the earlier versions of BeOS had… And hopefully, there is better support for the SB128 sound cards which was the main complaint in 2001. Also, a port of MPlayer is at works too. I just hope they will rewrite the GUI to be Zeta-like and simple.
The group is also considering the development of a rootless X11 (similar to how it works on Mac OS X and QNX) so applications like OpenOffice.org and other applications would be much more easily ported rather than going through the major pain doing a direct port (BeOS is kind of a pain regarding ports because it is very different architecture-wise than any other OS out there). When on rootless X11, its applications would run side-by-side the native Zeta ones. Personally, can’t wait for a fully accelerated port of X11 on Zeta.
Bugs and problems
In this beta, I found a few problems, bugs and things that I personally wouldn’t agree with as a very old BeOS user. I don’t use BeOS much anymore, but I do have a good grasp of its excellence in some points and its suckiness in others, so please forgive me for being opinionated.
So, here are a few problems I found in this beta and I wholeheartedly hope they will be fixed for the final version:
1. The fonts are bad. Very bad. I don’t know what YTAB changed in the settings of the font rendering engine, but fonts are plain ugly. Dano/EXP also used this new font engine, but it wasn’t as bad as in this Zeta beta. Linux’s latest font config is worlds better in my opinion.
2. The preference panel “Fonts” is now broken. Changing the font size in the “Plain Font” only changes it to the context menus, but not in the menus of the applications, as it should have.
3. SoundPlay and its plugins and email client Beam crash like there’s no tomorrow. No DivX support I could see.
4. There is a problem with the font sensitivity of the UI, and it is especially visible with *some* themes. I don’t know if this is a bug of Zeta or a bug of the theme. But on some applications there are problems with widgets colliding with others widgets (they render on top of the other).
5. There is no security/protection for the user, even now with the introduction of BONE, like a personal firewall. Something more advanced like internet connection sharing, would be cool to have too. However YTAB has worked on better ISDN support and that’s a plus.
6. The logo of Zeta in the Deskbar is really amateurish and when you click on it you get an even uglier look. But hey, it’s a beta, right?
7. No scanner support as of now. Bernd tells me they are working on it though so this is promising.
YellowTAB is a small team and it doesn’t have all the resources to work full scale on every aspect of the OS. However, the realities of the marketplace won’t be kind to the company, so I feel I am forced to also not soft-pedal my criticism.
Granted, this is a beta. However, the direction the OS is taking is already clear: Add features and more new user-space applications and some more and some more. I will have to ring the bell of danger for YTAB and ask for more fixes rather than more new features. BeOS 5 was by no means perfect. But it worked well for most people. Replacing parts that are known to work well and have served well with new parts that only add unnecessary bloat (e.g. the new Installer) or duplication (e.g. Dockbert), is hardly a step forward for the BeOS paradigm. In fact, this could be considered a step backward. We certainly don’t need another Linux, with mind-boggling choice and variety at every turn. Zeta should continue where BeOS has stopped, not transform the OS into bloatware and illogicality like your average Linux distribution. Surely, I love the new drivers. Surely, I like the new Tracker (even if it is still buggy), but instead of filling up the preferences with unneeded panels I would have to ask for things like:
1.Samba. Where is a working samba? We need interoperability!
2. There is _stil_ no support for more than 90 Hz in the monitor panel. In fact, the current screen panel doesn’t expose all the abilities of the driver and app_server. Be was thinking of moving to GTF, but Palm bought them before that happens.
3. No spell checking or voice reading in the text views of any Zeta application. No real support for accessibility.
4. No multi-user yet! Yes, this can break a number of older applications (which was why Be didn’t go live with it, but Zeta/Dano already breaks apps, so let them breat in one go instead of having to break more apps again in a few years), but someone has to take the big decision and activate the Be implementation (it is just a build flag ;). Zeta is a desktop OS, but multi-user also grows in the minds of people as times goes by. It is not 1998 anymore. Even Microsoft now offers multiuser on all its OSes.
5. Why doesn’t Zeta use the _new_ preference panel that was written for Dano/EXP. Why do we still get the old panels that are now filling up the menus? (more than 12 items on any menu is considered bad by usability engineers).
6. No fix for the numlock bug which makes BeOS to not remember if the NumLock was set to ON in the previous booting. Sounds trivial and stupid but really annoys a lot of people.
7. No fix for the 1 GB RAM limit. This is maybe the biggest BeOS/Zeta limitation today. Read here for more explanation and make sure you read the comments too.
8. BeOS can’t load more than 32 MB of addons, which is needed for big applications (a problem that almost stalled the Mozilla port back in the day). No more than 192 threads per app. Say you open more than 192 child windows or threads of an application, BeOS goes ca-boom (e.g. ShowImage).
9. Still, no Java.
10. Sucky VM in the kernel. Needs fixing. Source of many problems for Zeta, including the 1 GB RAM limit.
11. I’d like to see support for Great Britain’s TV cards (some TV cards use a different sound standard). There was an addon for it but never got integrated to BeOS.
12. Second biggest problem: No usable browser. NetPositive just doesn’t cut it anymore — it is a Netscape 2 compliant browser. Useless, at least for me, despite its speed, as it doesn’t support SSL (I don’t care about javascript, but I need SSL). The Mozilla/Phoenix ports are just _BAD_. BeOS was created to run on computers like P90 and P100. I use BeOS and Zeta on this (fast machine by the BeOS standards) dual Celeron 2×533 (which is the machine most BeOS geeks preffered back in the day) and BeZilla/Phoenix is just _unusable_. I am *not* saying that it is Mozilla’s fault, because in this case it is not. I also have Windows XP and Linux on this machine and while Mozilla doesn’t fly, it is 100% usable under these OSes. But on BeOS/Zeta, it is not. It crawls like hell. Again, I will have to ask YellowTAB to help fix the port, as a good browser is imperative no matter the platform (and the rest of the Mozilla apps that come with the browser). THIS port should be fixed, regardless. It is a strategic step for YellowTAB, even if YTAB doesn’t plan on using it as default.
Conclusion
Even with Mozilla so slow when operating clogging up both my CPUs, mp3 playback did not skip (while it does on Red Hat Linux 9 on the much faster AthlonXP 1600+). The OS still has the BeOS’ great UI responsiveness, but overall the system is a bit slower: you will need something like 80-100 Mhz more than the previous low-end (P75-P90) and at least 48 MB (previous low was 32 MB). Still, the OS overall, BeZilla/Phoenix aside, is much faster and responsive on low-end hardware than _any_ of its competition (Linux, Windows XP).
So, what I do I think of this beta? I believe that it is two steps forward and one step backwards. YellowTAB does some hard work to ensure driver support and application support, but at the same time they lose focus and spend time working on things that don’t need replacement or fixing and leaving aside other things that do need fixing. The hard problems are still there. YellowTAB must play catch up with Linux and Windows now, as BeOS was paused and not developed for years now. For now, I say “good job,” but keep running.
YellowTAB has a great advantage inheriting all this source code from Be, Inc. but also it has the inevitable curse that they will have to live in the shadow of the “legendary days” of R4.5 and R5. To overcome Be’s own legacy will take a lot of work. But it is a great help that Zeta is the true and only direct BeOS descentant, so they are currently years ahead in development than the other teams who try to reproduce the BeOS, like OpenBeOS, B.E.O.S, BeFree and Cosmoe. I hope that ex and BeOS developers and users show the support YellowTAB needs in order to survive and continue the development of the authentic and original BeOS code.
However, I would like to see some real engineering from YellowTAB, not just “development”. Some real breakthroughs and innovations, like we became accustomed to from Be. Hiring a usability engineer with real BeOS experience would be a good thing in my opinion. I am not talking about a UI artist, I am talking about a usability engineer. YellowTAB needs one. More engineers to join the team would be good too. If they could “hire” Axel, Marcus and 2-3 more “big brains” from the BeOS dev community and OpenBeOS, they could definately get some great results with time.
For version 1.0, I can say that I understand that the product needs to play catch up with the competition because of the lost time Palm created, but from now on, I need to see some achievements in order to draw attention in the market. BeOS was always about impressions and “wows”. So, impress me.
Installation: 9/10
Hardware Support: 6.5/10
Ease of use: 10/10
Features: 6.5/10
Credibility: 8/10 (stability, bugs, security)
Speed: 8.5/10 (throughput, UI responsiveness, latency)
Overall: 8.08
It is slow when crating new windows, and thus unusable for people heavily accustomized to SDI-model of InternetExplorer.
But it is almost usable with tabbed browsing
If you watch closely to the BeOS project, you can see, they are building on an existing kernel, newOS. This kernel is not finished yet, but making progress as we speak. This is a kernel simular to the BeOS kernel as it’s developed by an ex BeOS developer.
Also all the kits are developed serperately. You can install openBFS in BeOS r5 if you want. Also Zeta is adopting the opensource code of OpenBeOS already in it’s OS, or at least the developing tools they created.
I also agree we don’t have to expect an openBEOS release comming out next year, but 10 years, I hope they will finish sooner.
Then there’s also Beunited.org, what is neglecting it’s tasks, It was ment to be a standarisation for openSource BeOS development, but in the mean while all the openSource projects are developing the Kits from scratch. And B.E.OS is split in another project called BeFree, this means all developers are scatterd over projects which will take years. I hope beunited will get it’s act togheter and glue all the projects into a mean lean developing machine. In my eyes it still is posible to keep different projects, but by gluing the kit developing into central teams would speed up progress. The tricky part is letting the kits work with the chosen kernel.
Also everybody is throwing names around the board, and I just want to mention I’m a big fan of Darkwyrm a developer with OBOS. I hope he will recover soon and takes a little more time for his health, because a healthy darkwyrm can code more than a sick darkwyrm
Oops in the beginning I mention BeOS as an opensource project, which should have read OBOS
sorry
what i really can’t understand is that this should be Beta5A.. despite the fact that Beta4 should have been the last one, this still looks more like a developer-alpha than like a Beta. the point of a Beta is that you only fix bugs and don’t add features anymore.
looking at the screenshots, there’s still lots of stuff that needs to be fixed or even added (and a Beta shouldn’t have more features added, new features = new bugs).. like seen here:
http://img.osnews.com/img/3692/zeta2.png
the “under construction” in the updater preferences.
i also hear here and there about secret innovations that YT still has. but if they really have.. why the hell do they keep them secret?? i think NOW is the right time to show. i think this review is read by a LOT of people. if there are innovations they should have been in this reviewed Beta, because later people won’t care anymore.
just my 0.02?..
syrek, BeFree is a project and B.E.OS. is another one.
Please remember these words.
To Eugenia —
(This is comment #206, so I hope it gets read…)
Can you please preview the networking part? I never got Dano, so I’ve no idea how is it working, if there were any improvements, etc.
I really don’t like the default theme, I’d prefer the BeOS 5 look but it seems that you can change the Zeta theme.
It looks a good (except for the UI) work but I am not sure if Zeta has a future.
Zeta is a sort of Dano but I don’t know the term of the license they have with Palm.
Can YT start with the Dano code and release a Zeta version 2 with some improvements, such as a full multi user environment and a better VM?
I am happy to hear that BeOS is hard to kill but I think that BeOS is not the operating system of the future.
Linux and other Free *NIX are complete operating systems, much POSIX compliants and perhaps much stable.
My experience with BeOS Max was too bad to consider BeOS as stable as Linux with new hardware.
Anyway I would try Zeta, maybe I will buy a copy.
Max isn’t much more than bebits-loaded R5… considered by some people illegal btw (at least the selling of CDs, which theorically isn’t allowed in the PE licence, only free download)
[quote]Two new coders joined us and received a full CVS access. The first one released some days later BeFree, a BeOS clone based on the FreeBSD kernel under GPL&LGPL license. I don’t know if BeFree will try to reuse our code or not,but its Kernel Kit has some similarities.[/quote]
reading these lines, I think somebody has joined, riped and started his own project. I don’t think he’s working on 2 projects.
I will surely buy the zeta for my part…
BeOS used to be an OS that I loved to use, same for linux, but the current distrib and the way linux is heading just plainly suck and I prefer to stick with a winxp currently.
I really hope that there will be some hardware OpenGL acceleration, in fact it will be surely the main reason if I buy it or not.
For mozilla on an athlon xp 2gHz with 512MB, well it’s slow as hell ( on BeOS ), I am wondering how people can say it’s usuable…a P3 < 1gHz box running win98 is way faster than that…
Anyway I really hope that there will be harware OpenGL acceleration ( i know second time I am saying that
) , without that, they will failed without a doubt sadly.
And to finish, great review, better to point out the mistake s in an alpha version than when it will be a “true” beta…
I hope that YT will finish well the zeta and not rush it out….
Thank some of you for mentioning BeZilla. Though it does not run really fast on my Pentium II 350, it seems to work fast enough to be usabe. Okay, Opera or NetPositive is a hundred times faster, it is somewhat slower than Mozilla on Linux or Windows, but still it is usable.
Maybe some people forget some things and try to compare apples with pears.
Peoples forgot worldwide betas (like win3.1 & 95) with millions of beta-testers and the problem for these users at this time to install a Linux distribution.
Now, a decade later, all is easy and looks fine. But the “giants” of OS Houses are still not perfect: I can take a decision between a teletubbie_UI-OS with build-in blue screens or a Linux with uglier UI (except RedHats bluecurve) and a horrible translation from enlish language to german Language (yes, ppl, shut up about Bernds english, the US-american german isn’t a way better). Nobody is perfect!
Seems, people expect from yT a complete better, faster, multicompatible and “i don’t know what more”-OS.
Hey, awake!! Yellowtab is a company with only a handfull of people and a small budget.
I mean we should think of the way could be the target…
If zeta RC1 isn’t give 100% satisfaction to the world, we, the users can talk with yT to make some things better for the future.
Try to ask Microsoft about a driver for bfs, haha…
Give this new flower a chance, be fair!
and don’t forget: Be DIFFERENT!!!
To Bernd, mmu_man, looncraz and any member of the developer team of yellowTAB: RESPECT! You did a wonderful job!
leprOSy,
dan0/ PhOS user
PS> do not forget: mozilla/phoenix/firebird is not a hack of yT
PS_2> mozilla works fine here under dan0, i never had problems and it is not much slower than under other OSes…
I am certainly not trying to speak for Eugenia, but when she spoke about OBOS in a decade, I think she was using it as a figure of speech. In other words, nobody has any idea at all when OBOS will even have a beta.
Some of the posts in this thread have been excellent, but just as many are ridiculous. The idea of people, after reading a review of a *beta*, saying they will not, under any circumstances, buy it because it doesn’t have sliding tabs or some feature someone doesn’t want, is ridiculous. We’ll see when the time comes. I don’t know what the final outcome of Zeta will as far as being a success or not. It certainly has a steep uphill climb to make. But, I know people here (like myself) will be opening our wallets because we won’t be able to resist.
The tremendous amount of posts in this thread does not surprise me at all. BeOS is an OS that touches sensitive nerves and many are still angry and passionate about it. It was the one OS that almost made it – and a great OS it is.
I recommend the video posted above….all I can say is wow.
It still has the elegance of BeOS r5….but emulating the mac on x86, and ripping DVDs to DivX in 1hr (both on an athlon xp2400) are definitely selling points to me! Where do I sign….
I had thought of buying Zeta, but I am dissuaded by this review. The loss of sliding tabs is fatal; it was one of my favorite features (I open a lot of windows at one time). The fact that font rendering has become worse is also very bad. I thought R5 was bad enough. Looking at R5 for an extended time made my eyes water.
For me to be interested again in BeOS, I would require:
1. Either very good anti-aliasing of the fonts or the ability to turn off anti-aliasing.
2. Fix the query mechanism so that querying on a missing attribute does not always produce false, even when I have a !=. The database file system is almost excellent but not quite, for email filtering.
3. A half-decent browser.
4. Bring back sliding tabs.
5. Copy/paste of files. (Seems like this one has been done.)
6. Command line move and copy should preserve attributes safely.
7. A working “man” command vs. pointing and grunting through a bunch of html links to find documentation.
I would also really like a port of the ruby programming langage for scripting.
Ruby is already ported: http://www.bebits.com/app/1741
might not be the newest version but still…
> 6. Command line move and copy should preserve attributes safely.
There is a copyatr and moveatr or something. Try them on the command line, there are there since forever.
>4. Bring back sliding tabs.
This is not possible with the new theming engine. The window manager is brand new code and it doesn’t have such capabilities because of it.
> 1. Either very good anti-aliasing of the fonts or the ability to turn off anti-aliasing.
Since BeOS R5.1 you can turn off AA totally, and even tweak it much uglier, system-wide.
> 2. Fix the query mechanism so that querying on a missing attribute does not always produce false
I’m not sure this isn’t intended by the semantics of bfs queries…
> 3. A half-decent browser.
I must say mozilla is becomming usable… though I still use Opera here :^)
> 4. Bring back sliding tabs.
Once again, it’s not that we don’t want to, but it might need some engineering (read: time spent, = money) on that, as it doesn’t seem to be possible currently.
> 6. Command line move and copy should preserve attributes safely.
The cp and mv CLI tools do what they are supposed to do…
There had been numerous fights about making them attribute-aware or not. The simplest cons is it’s Unix tool, it shouldn’t deal with non-Unix stuff. (btw, copyattr –data copies attributes, and mv does move them along as long as it’s on the same partition)
> 7. A working “man” command vs. pointing and grunting through a bunch of html links to find documentation.
I have a better idea on this side as well…
> I would also really like a port of the ruby programming langage for scripting.
Nobody stops you from porting it yourself… or search on bebits:
http://www.bebits.com/app/1741
Eugenia wrote:
But I know things that none of you know, and I can tell you that Be
had no other choices than the ones it made.
Yeah, they had no choice but to make their shareholders happy. Bleh. I still have my Be Inc “We *heart* developers” letter. I guess it should’ve said “We *heart* shareholders”.
Re YT, I’m sorry, but the new GUI is a mess — regardless if Be Inc themselves began working on it. The original R5 GUI is clean, functional, looks good, and is spartan. The new one is extra frills for frill’s-sake. Yuck.
Finally, I still don’t understand: does YT actually have the BeOS source code or what? Is this all legit, or will Palm be shutting them down once COTS boxes are available?
Yes, it is legit. YT had agreements with Be before Palm bought it, agreements that had to be kept (as far as I know).
YT had agreements with Be before Palm bought it, agreements that had to be kept (as far as I know).
If that truly is the case, I’d be curious to know how long the license contract is good for.
I’m still curious to see YT’s actual release, and to see how much of the community’s responses they take to heart.
Well,
I saw Zeta in different versions and had the advantage to see how it developped (generally it got better every version) – from the leaked dano clone to towards Beta s throughout CeBit and last at Begeistert 10.
Eugenia was everytime a decent writer, trying to bring the GEEK towards BeOS user and for all the other Penguin Heads, Big Brother M$ Wankers and Egophilish Mac Dummies (call me blond, cuz I use a Mac, not Wintel, Aye!).
In this column I just read about the Glory and Grace of Be Inc. through Eugenia’s hand which undoubtable had one of the most shitty Managements found at any sector.
If you put the grace of the developers which could downsized to half a dozen of real Einstein’s together with the unbeatable bad Management, you will get a company which smoked nearly a quarter of a billion US$ in the oven. This is Eugenia’s magic Be…
Criticizm – yes of course, Eugenia. But this was neither exact a correct test nor fair…(in one point youre right: economy is not fair).
YT has to cope with all this ghosts, attempt to polish up their OS to today’s standards in more’n’more points. And it’s heavily suffering from the lack of coders. That’s true, Eugenia.
Eugenia is talking about a fast machine she’s got for testing – well, great days those old BP6 days Eugenia – but life goes on.
Zeta rocks on a P4, Dual Tualatin P3 or an actual AthlonXP’s. Running Basilisk, Bochs on diffferent Workspaces parallelly (in fact this must be the fastest MacOS 8.x machine I’ve ever seen, even in Emu mode), watching the mpeg2/divX’ed Movie (take a concrete look, Eugenia – there IS DivX support) DURING ripping that movie directly from DVD, opening over 3000 mp3 simultanously with Soundplay (guess what Eugenia – Soundplay did NOT crash!! Wonderworld!) IS enough performance and shows me that they are on the right way.
In fact, ZETA has more Perfomance you will ever get on any Wintendo or ‘get a coffee until I boot’-Gentoo Linux or your ‘Click-1-2-3-4 Finder-nearly-opens’-MacOS BSDX’ed.
YT improved Bone from Bone7a to Bone8, they corrected errors in the mediakit2, the are in talks for a heavy crypto – support by the Stegemann Bro’s (!).
These thinks are simply DO work. And yes HT is supported on P4 – even watching ZETA flying on an U160 15k SCSI disk is mind blowing (and yes it is the Adaptec AHA29160 SCSI Card which is supported by Zeta)….
They got a hard ride to ride. As long they keep ears on the Community and keep the management on the safe side, we should support YT folks where we can.
YT’s only mistake is that they disgruntle a lot of great CODERS in not delivering the latest actual Beta’s to their hands. That’s a BIG mistake they have to work on.
But this is not a point you (could) mention.
Anyway: Honour to those who still Be-lieve.
My vote for your insight view: 3 of 10.
Sorry.
Submission of a comment on OSNews implies that you have acknowledged and fully agreed to the following terms:
1. No bad mouthing or cursing.
2. No attacks to other users or news editors of this web site.
3. Whatever you got to say, say it in a calm way, and explain your reasoning as an adult, and not as a 10-year old kid.
I got modded down for something I wrote, yet Eugenia says far worse and makes it personal, yet her posts stay up. Lovely.
I am trying to respond to you for the last half an hour and your email address does NOT work. Provide me with an email address that does and you will get the answer.
Try [email protected]
all i care about is that their command prompt still has the same awesome functionality it had in r5. if only linux had a bash shell for x with the same functionality.
For those of you who are comparing usability/ease of use of linux to beos. give me a break, try beos then talk.
anywho, once zeta is out, I am buying it. I have a p2 450 with 512 megs of ram pc doing nothing.
and a suggestion to yt: if possible, try to release the source to anything you can. open source isnt the holy grail, but i’m sure it will still help. work with the devs as much as possible, thats what i loved about be.
“Linux’s latest font config is worlds better in my opinion.”
Linux doesn’t have anything but a kernel. Linux is a kernel not a distribution.
If you want to say that:
“The latest Linux distributions feature font configuration that is worlds better in my opinion.”
That is accurate, it is inaccurate, and wrong to say that “Linux” has font configuration. It DOES NOT. Linux is a kernel, not an operating system, and not a distribution.
Even if I were to assume “Linux’s latest font config” referred to the “latest” Linux distribution, which one would that be, the latest of RedHat, SuSE, Mandrake, etc? Please be more accurate.
Or maybe I would be talking about BlueEyed OS, XFree86, or FBDirect’s font configuration. Or KDE’s font configuration vs. Gnome’s configuration.
Apparently Eugenia has forgotten that Linux has *MANY* options for different desktop applications and there is no such thing as a “Linux font configuration” program.
I’m still hoping that Zeta will improve on BeOS 5.0.3 without breaking compatibility. I’m not too worried about new apps coming from Zeta, maintaining the OS is more important. Even more importantly, though, I’m hoping that Zeta will build interest in BeOS, and bridge the gap between 5.0.03 and OBOS.
It’s a shame that the Yellowtab people won’t or can’t be more open about their code and agreements, but it seems likely to me that Yellowtab will eventually switch to OBOS as it develops. Part of the beauty of the “BeOS” way is the modularity of the OS, which should make it easier to modify and upgrade. But I agree that they shouldn’t offer unnecessary or duplicate options. A downloadable system much like BeBits would be fine if a user wants something different.
As for the sliding tabs, I’ve always found it to be a “neat” feature, but not all that useful. As someone else mentioned, if you could “group” tabbed windows together, it would be more useful. But I like right-clicking on the title bar to send a window behind other windows–I don’t know of any other UI that offers that.
Finally, while I agree that Mozilla/Phoenix is still slow, I wouldn’t call it unusable. I’m running BeOS 5.0.3 on an old AMD K6-200Mhz system, and while slow, it works. I can do my banking and manage my credit cards on their websites with Moz/Phoenix. Yes, having a decent browser is important to the OS, but we simply need more good developers working on it, or a good alternative like NetOptimist. The Zeta people seem to have spread themselves too thin as it is. I suppose they could’ve worked on a browser instead of a To-Do list, though.
Heh…
We are stretched a little thin, but we have to be in order to get out a respectable product. We are not rushing this as much as many want us to, because we can’t afford it.
ToDoIt is nost like working on a browser. A browser is very close to its own OS, which is why there aren’t billions of them that are great.. just three or so. We already have a working Mozilla and a great Phoenix. So we work on those… and yes, we actually do.
yellowTAB is very similar to OBOS in organization… haphazard with only minimal order. Everyone has some idea as to what they should do, but they know that if they don’t do it.. someone else can take over… just takes longer. We are developing in such a manner that our work can be thrown on top of maybe an OBOS R1 and then OBOS R1 will be a modern OS still, with modern features.
yT is not like Be, INC. We are not extremist minimalists. We like options.
We do have a coordinated effort going, the problem is that certain features are so interdependent that showing off parts to the public just creates confusion. The language panel that Eugenia saw was to allow anyone to modify the language translations. When R1 is released, it will make perfect sense.
The decors, except one or two, are all concepts. Alpha or Beta quality. If there is a problem with one decor, it is because it was just being used for testing, and thrown into the beta simply for archival purposes.
Remember, after Beta comes delta, gamma, release canidate, then release. We are approaching the next threshold very quickly, and the steam is now picking up.. mostly thanks to the attention here.
And for whoever it was who said that Zeta seems to have troubles PhOS fixed, just remember.. I made PhoS, too 🙂 If the problems are back, it is because there is a better fix on the way. A proper fix, not a hack.
–The loon
Slow. Slow slow slow. SLOW. It works, for the most part, (I can do my bankingand browse sites that Net+ cannot browse) but it is very slow and does not behave as though it is really a BeOS app. My goodness, the controls are sluggish and they aren’t BeOS API controls. The scroll bar, for example… there’s almost zero visual connection between the use of the scroll-bar and the result of its use. Horrible. The Mozilla UI stuff is double-plus ungood.
I would love if Mozilla on BeOS were to be gutted and rebuilt as a native app. I mean, then it wouldn’t really BE Mozilla, but hey, I don’t have any problems with that. All I care about is having a decent browser that performs like a native app.
I hope that YellowTab’s developers are testing things on computers that AREN’T the bleeding edge. I run on a PIII 500MHz (planning to up it to 933). There are lots of BeOS users on older machines. That’s the beauty of BeOS. It makes your older machines live longer because the OS isn’t a bloated bastard pig.
I also hope that YellowTab is selecting the right people as beta testers and that they listen to them. Harsh commentary like Eugenia’s is exactly what they need to pay the most attention to.
> Slow. Slow slow slow. SLOW. It works, for the most part, (I can do my bankingand browse sites that Net+ cannot browse) but it is very slow and does not behave as though it is really a BeOS app. My goodness, the controls are sluggish and they aren’t BeOS API controls. The scroll bar, for example… there’s almost zero visual connection between the use of the scroll-bar and the result of its use. Horrible. The Mozilla UI stuff is double-plus ungood.
EXACTLY. Thank you Jace.
I don’t mind the looks of the widgets not being native, but I DO mind the slowness.
I doubt anyone will continue reading up to this point (231 posts), but here’s my $0.02 worth.
-yeah, I’ll buy Zeta Deluxe. Why not.
-Mozilla is dead, Firebird is the successor. Who cares if the shipping version is not perfect, its not as if updates aren’t available every 2 weeks on BeBits.
-Who cares about sliding tabs? Neat, but never really used it. Thats why you have WORKSPACES.
-Dockbert is a lame duplicate, its not as if you cant turn it off. Looks neat the first time you see it, though, so it may be used by newbies more often than the deskbar.
-Themes are selectable, I like the Gonx screenshot shown on the BeOSJournal.org Beta review.
-There are new video drivers coming (hinted on BeOSJournal), it may be that YT may licenced the SciTech display technology (my guess, not fact). Heck, even poor Amiga licenced that tech.
All in all, YellowTab have done an excellent job for their first release. Dont dispair people, there is always room for a Zeta2, Zeta3 etc. Eventually, ZETA will use the OBOS core instead of Dano. Until then, enjoy Zeta. It’s a stop gap until OBOS arrives in 2 years or so.
Beta _preview_, not review
Did you also like those babies photos? That’s my niece 
DaaT
http://www.beosjournal.org
ugh.. i meant “baby’s photos” of course… silly me.
DaaT
It’s a shame that the Yellowtab people won’t or can’t be more open about their code and agreements,
As a responsible company, they should tell their customers the truth. I assume they have.
Their site says:
Before Be, Inc. sold its assets to Palm, Inc., we managed to close a deal allowing us to distribute the PE version…
In June 2001 while we went into the final negotiations with Be, Inc. over financing the development of a release of BeOS R6, we got the message from Be, Inc. that they were no longer able to negotiate with us. [snip]
Once the shareholders of Be, Inc. had voted to approve the sale to Palm we established the needed contact with Palm, Inc. in November.
Note, that says contact, not contract.
That doesn’t sound to me like they have any source code, but rather that they may legally distribute PE binaries.
I’m not sure why anyone thinks they have licensed the BeOS code base. I certainly can’t find anywhere on their site that says so. Maybe someone here is starting rumors?
Did anyone really beleive that ‘any’ company could buy the rights to BEOS and just continue running the show as in the past; producing ground breaking apps & revolutionary OS concepts?
If it is true that Zeta has bought more than just the Open Source rights to BEOS, then I believe it is possible that great things may, yet come from them.
I have had the pleaasure to have written programs for many OS’s including DOS, OS2, UNIX(SCO, AIX. & Coherent), as well as BEOS.
Let me tell ya, programming a BEOS app is no piece of cake. It can, however, be much eazier than doing the same task on most other OS’s. Depends on experience & friends.
I haven’t had the pleasure to try out Zeta yet. I do trust Eugenia’s judgement and when they make a version available, I will buy it.
I will be quite happy if Zeta just sells me a (cheap) version that supports most of the last BEOS release & a little DANO plus more drivers. I would expect them to hire additiional ‘vital engineer’s; at this point and produce a much better second version. A consolidatiion between the various open systems into YellowTab would also be usefull.
The simple truth remains, there have been almost no extended attempts to ‘create a new OS’ in decades, with the exception of BEOS.
I wish YellowTab only the best & I would like ya’ll to seriously consider the (mostly) valid points that Eugenia brought up in her article.
PS – I would realy like to beleive that the staff of YellowTab is FULL of dreamers.
Sincerely,
Mike
Well, I am for Zeta and I admire what a few people are trying to do. Why we have the community fractured as it is working on similar projects instead of focusing to bring what we all want is beyond me.
OpenBeOS will slowly creep into Zeta as different parts are developed or so that is my understanding. I think this is great as the combination of these two teams will keep the code and OS distribution alive.
Browsers, now I would love to have Opera 7 on Zeta, screw Mozilla unless someone does some serious code culling and chop out the bloat. I want Zeta mainly as my primary OS and as an OS I can use for Music creation purposes (VST’s and hard disk recording/editing/mixing). I know no other OS that has the potential to do this as well as BeOS and it’s derrivatives. Windows XP is a joke and so is Mac OS-X. Linux is just as bad but is seems to be doing well in the 3D scene. I think Zeta/OpenBeOS would make a real killing in the Pro/Semi Pro media content creation markets and tying into that gaming (would love Il2 FB to run on it then I would be liberated from Windows).
I will wait and see what the YT team deliver and most likely end up purchasing Zeta cause I know they are the only conduit for BeOS derrivatives and I don’t think OpenBeOS will survive that well without them and my computing sanity will definately not survive for too long in a MS world.
Mmmkay… Maybe I’m stupid, maybe my english is so bad that i just don’t get it. How about these sources? There was a discussion about the sourcecodes in this forum, but I didn’t find a proper answer to the question “Does YellowTAB has the original sourcecodes to BeOS?”. Obviously YellowTAB has something more than BeOS R5, and obviously it’s very much like Dano. Obviously it includes BONE (90% finished). But how about the actual sourcecode? If they don’t have all lines of code, they will never be able to complete the last 10% in BONE (in a nice manner), neither will they be able to complete the remaining coding in the rest of the system. They will surely be able to make patch after patch and somehow make the darn thing run, BUT NEVER PERFECTLY.
Ok, let’s say they have the sourcecode. That’s great! We will see Zeta R1, and I will buy it (if my hardware is supported, since I don’t have the money to buy new). Hopefully we will see Zeta R2 and so on… The question about how YellowTAB will manage this is a latter one. As Eugenia has pointed out several times, they will need engineers, not BeOS geeks (no offense meant, I highly respect YellowTABs work).
Let’s say that they don’t have the actual sources, but just some binaries and a few lines here end there. Well, not so great. We will, here to, see Zeta R1 (which I still will buy), but nothing more. Maybe they can make some more patches and blaha blaha… It just won’t hold!
The reason I ask is that I want to know, or at least get a feeling, of what the future holds for Zeta. Will YellowTAB ever become a company like Be Inc., with 100s of employees and such? I am not a big fan of the OBOS project, it’s a great thought and it might help Zeta, but I just can’t see how it could become a well-working OS in a relatively near future. All respect to OpenSource, but in this case I think a company with funds and competence is what is needed. We don’t need to see the sourcecode to BeOS (Zeta), we just need to know if it exists! Can we trust YellowTAB?
Surely I understand that it’s very much about business right now. YellowTAB can’t reveal too much because of their situation. But what I don’t understand, is why we can’t have a yes or no answer to my initial question? And, to underline it even more, the question is more about trust than anything else. I want to know if there will be a future for Zeta/YellowTAB or not.
So, please give me a straight answer. I would think I’m not the only one that wants one. And if it’s not possible to answer yes or no, please tell me why!
Thank you,
Elias
Euginia, if you pass any comments on to YellowTab, let them know that even though we can’t have sliding tabs back we still want the original BeOS widgets (those new buttons are ugly, designed by Be or not)
I have tested Zeta Beta5a and found it to be every bit BeOS, entirely familiar and comfortable, stable, and quick. People might want to quibble about little window dressing things, but in my experience, it did a great job of running BeOS applications and presented me with an interface that only varied slightly from what I was used to in 5 PE. In moments I had everything arranged to my liking. This is BeOS 5 with an improved media kit, improved networking, improved drivers, improved lots-of-things. Let’s be happy and eager for Zeta and quit slamming it. Geez, it’s not even out yet and the wolves are already at the door!
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. Probably the most important app is the browser. I really wish somebody would do something similar to Safari and create a BeOS browser based on KHTML. Even Atheos/Syllable has ABrowse. It would finally give BeOS users a high quality browser with a BeOS native GUI. Not that I don’t like how Mozilla/Firebird are progressing. I just want a native browser with native controls, and therefore, native speed. Is that too much to ask?
-G
I have tried several ( of the FEW ) browsers available for BeOS, and I still keep coming back to NetPositive 2.1. Yes, it’s old, and has a few JavaScript problems, but it is fast and stable. The NetPositive 3.0.3 beta is horrible, and Opera doesn’t support 3.62 anymore. Also (maybe it’s just me since I’m a BeOS newbie), I didn’t have much success with BeZilla. But I DO agree with the concept of a Safari-like browser. That would be nice, in my opinion.
“Be” good to each other.
John
PS:Is the Zeta Beta available for purchase from yellowTab yet/at all?
That’s good enough for me & I was always gonna buy Zeta in the first place anyway. Slam it all you like just cos it doesn’t live up to YOUR expectations – then look at the interest this review has aroused.
I dread the way things seem to be heading – to a future where it’s a moot point as to who actually owns my data & my right to use it. I’m in the despised “average user” league & way too old to adopt Linux, believe me I’ve tried. I still enjoy the simplicity & stability of BeOS, so Zeta’s the future for me & probably many others like me. “Where do I sign?” – I’m ready when you are, you got my money too, yellowtab.
Hi Eugenia,
I enjoyed reading your article.
– detailed description of problems
– no brainless hurra
– ability to criticise
– background knowdledge
– writing style
and others.
Thanks!